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Health Care for America Now! Coalition Launches Today |
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The drive to win quality health care for all—one of the voters’ key issues this fall—got a boost today when a new coalition, including the AFL-CIO, unveiled plans for a nationwide campaign to build support for health care reform when a new president and Congress take office in 2009.
Health Care for America Now! is a coalition of more than 80 labor, community, health activist, women’s, netroots and other groups. It will undertake a campaign that includes building grassroots support and educating the public and lawmakers on how to fix the broken health care system that is putting quality health care further and further out of reach of almost all families.
Says AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker:
Working families are suffering mightily under health care that costs too much, covers too little, excludes to many and is getting worse. Both workers and our employers need relief soon. If we fail to enact comprehensive reform in the next Congress, employment-based health benefits—the backbone of our health system—will disappear is short order.
The unions of the AFL-CIO and our members are campaigning to Turn Around America on health care and will continue to do so until the job is done. We salute the new coalition Health Care for America NOW! and are thrilled at the prospect of working closely with such our allies to fight for change across the length and breadth of America.
- The campaign’s plans were rolled out a National Press Club press conference in Washington, D.C., and at more than 40 simultaneous events in state capitols and major cities.
The Health Care for America Now! effort will rely on a combination of local events, regional and national TV and print advertising, plus a major presence in the new media world of Internet, blogs and text messaging.
Richard Kirsch, the group’s executive director, said:
It is time the insurance industry started putting our health before its profits. We need an American solution to health care that offers quality, affordability, and choice. We need a solution that works for our families and our businesses, and now is the time to make sure the next president and Congress deliver on the promise of quality, affordable health care for all in 2009
Health care is definitely on the minds of voters. Of the nearly 27,000 people who took the AFL-CIO/Working America 2008 Health Care for America survey, 79 percent say health care will be a key issue when they cast their ballots, and 97 percent say they plan to vote this fall.
Last week, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s June tracking poll found that while the rapidly worsening economy topped voters’ concerns, the cost of health care remained a top issue. Nearly half say they are most worried about paying for health care costs and the mounting out-of-pocket expenses and rising costs of health insurance.
This spring, some 300 AFL-CIO central labor councils focused on health care reform and the fall elections in discussions with members at monthly union meetings. In April, union members in dozens of cities mobilized for neighborhood labor walks to talk with other union members about Sen. John McCain’s health care plans.
McCain’s proposal is a rehash of President Bush’s failed scheme. It won’t cut costs, won’t cover more people and would raise taxes on employers and employees alike, pushing workers out of job-based plans and leaving them at the mercy of the private insurance market.
During Congress’ summer recess in August, local and a state union leaders and activists will meet with key representatives, senators and candidates in home district meetings around the country to stress the need for action on health care reform when a new Congress and president take office.
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Another AFL-CIO cave-in!
Below is a letter I sent to Health Care for America Now! Their address is on “K” Street in Washngton, D.C. (AKA, “lobbyist’s row”). I sent the same letter to True Majority. They are pmping the inadequate cave-in plan.
July 8, 2008
Dear True Majority:
The principles espoused by True Majority are admirable. It is obvious that people are listening, and then taking action in response to prompts by True Majority.
That is why it is so vitally important for True Majority to support the real solution to our nation’s health care woes. The solution is HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act. True Majority’s “Health Care For America NOW!” campaign falls short of the mark.
Many of us have been advocating for national, single-payer health care for years – long before True Majority was founded. We are volunteers with limited resources. We lack the funds and name recognition that True Majority enjoys.
Please do not dilute our message by proposing something less than what is needed. A “public/private” health care system is what we’ve been struggling with for decades, and look where it has gotten us. The lamentable, immoral facts are well known. If profit-taking remains a component of this nation’s health care system, we’ll continue to hear horror stories about inaccessibility and unaffordability.
Incremental band-aid fixes will guarantee continued suffering. As long as lobbyists for the health care troika – insurance companies, pharmaceutical conglomerates, and for-profit hospitals – are allowed to roam the halls of Congress throwing bags full of money through the open transoms of Congressional offices, health care justice will elude us.
Please join with the Physicians for a National Health Program, with most of organized labor, with numerous community and faith-based organizations, with Healthcare-NOW!, with 90+ House Democrats, with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and with the overwhelming majority (the “true majority”) of the people in our country and support HR 676. Watered-down, incremental approaches only guarantee continued anguish and suffering.
Don’t dilute our message! The solution is HR 676. Help America achieve that humane, cost-effective solution.
Thank you.
cc: Health Care for America Now
Let’s not mince words.
The program that Health Care for America Now! is unworkable - because it is unaffordable. It points our health care reform movement in the wrong direction.
My central labor council is one of the 300 AFL-CIO central labor councils that have organized meetings to promote health care reform - but we insisted on doing it on the program that our clc, and our Vermont State Fed, democratically adopted.
We are supporting HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act because we need a single pool ( a single-payer), and we need to get the insurance companies out of health care. We need health care not insurance!
HR 676 has been endorsed by over 417 union organizations in 48 states including 107 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 33 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO,MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA & AK).
Health Care for America Now!’s approach was floated at the Jobs with Justice convention recently where it fell flat. Labor’s activist base will not be mobilized for an unworkable “compromise” that seems to have been designed not to win real health care reform, but to keep the Democratic Party’s big corporate funders happy.
In Vermont, and elsewhere, we will continue to organize for real health care reform.
Traven, President Washington-Orange-Lamoille Labor Council
The only thing with substance and that I agree on is “It is time the insurance industry started putting our health before its profits”.
The only solution is to rid the insurance industry from the process of insuring ALL. HR 676 is the solution. Right now I keep hearing Obama will get us “universal” health care and McSame will tax the hell out of us.
As for TV coverage, on June 19th. thousands of people marched in front of insurance hdqtrs. in 15 cities protesting the industry’s practice of PROFIT OVER PATIENTS. There was some media coverage, but the message got across.
As long the insurance lobby sit in negotiations, we lose! Do you honestly think they want to lower premiums, provide more coverage, quit denying procedures to the sick? If you think so, then George Bush should be made a saint!
As I have mentioned many times, labor needs to listen to its members. We pay dues to the AFL CIO and SHOULD have a say in what type of health care the organization should be pushing for.
34 out of 50 State AFL CIOs have endorsed a single payer system.
President Sweeney, I think you should address this adn tell us why you prefer employer-based health care.
With single payer, EVERYONE gets covered, there would be no need at contract talks to bring this issue up.
HR 676 currently has 90 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers.
Co-sponsors and bill text are here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.00676:
HR 676 has been endorsed by 438 union organizations in 48 states
including 110 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 34 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO, MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK & MI).
If the AFL-CIO had come on board for single payer years ago when activists were pushing it ( 1988, 1990) we’d have it by now and wouldn’t still be dealing with these empty ‘reforms’ and half measures. It’s bad enough that Andy Stern works with Wal-Mart and Gov. Schwarzenegger to try to hoodwink people into thinking these insurance company friendly schemes will bring universal health care. But the AFL-CIO keeps launching these campaigns that offer no real solutions, as it did about a year ago when Linda Chavez Thompson started promoting health care as the AFL’s big campaign, but would not commit to supporting HR 676.
Well it appears that those who commented have let their opinions be known on this suddenly new reform movement!
Over 435 trade unions across the nation have endorsed H.R. 676, yet the labor hiearchy just doesn’t get it! WHY??
The people are NO longer wanting corporate parasites dictating the terms of their healthcare coverage! We want single payer healthcare for all! If England, Germany, France and even Cuba can provide healthcare for their people, why can’t the U.S.?